|
back to New Hacker's Dictionary Go to the previous, next section.
G /pref.,suff./ [SI] See quantifiers.
g-file /n./ [Commodore BBS culture] Any file that is written
with the intention of being read by a human rather than a machine,
such as the Jargon File, documentation, humor files, hacker lore,
and technical materials.
This term survives from the nearly forgotten Commodore 64
underground and BBS community. In the early 80s, C-Net had emerged
as the most popular C64 BBS software for systems which encouraged
messaging (as opposed to file transfer). There were three main
options for files: Program files (p-files), which served the same
function as `doors' in today's systems, UD files (the user
upload/download section), and g-files. Anything that was meant to
be read was included in g-files.
gabriel /gay'bree-*l/ /n./ [for Dick Gabriel, SAIL LISP
hacker and volleyball fanatic] An unnecessary (in the opinion of
the opponent) stalling tactic, e.g., tying one's shoelaces or
combing one's hair repeatedly, asking the time, etc. Also used to
refer to the perpetrator of such tactics. Also, `pulling a
Gabriel', `Gabriel mode'.
gag /vi./ Equivalent to choke, but connotes more
disgust. "Hey, this is FORTRAN code. No wonder the C compiler
gagged." See also barf.
gang bang /n./ The use of large numbers of loosely coupled
programmers in an attempt to wedge a great many features into a
product in a short time. Though there have been memorable gang
bangs (e.g., that over-the-weekend assembler port mentioned in
Steven Levy's "Hackers"), most are perpetrated by large
companies trying to meet deadlines; the inevitable result is
enormous buggy masses of code entirely lacking in
orthogonality. When market-driven managers make a list of all
the features the competition has and assign one programmer to
implement each, the probability of maintaining a coherent (or even
functional) design goes infinitesimal. See also firefighting,
Mongolian Hordes technique, Conway's Law.
garbage collect /vi./ (also `garbage collection', n.) See
GC.
garply /gar'plee/ /n./ [Stanford] Another metasyntactic
variable (see foo); once popular among SAIL hackers.
gas [as in `gas chamber'] 1. /interj./ A term of disgust
and hatred, implying that gas should be dispensed in generous
quantities, thereby exterminating the source of irritation. "Some
loser just reloaded the system for no reason! Gas!" 2. /interj./ A
suggestion that someone or something ought to be flushed out of
mercy. "The system's getting wedged every few minutes.
Gas!" 3. /vt./ To flush (sense 1). "You should gas that old
crufty software." 4. [IBM] /n./ Dead space in nonsequentially
organized files that was occupied by data that has since been
deleted; the compression operation that removes it is called
`degassing' (by analogy, perhaps, with the use of the same term
in vacuum technology). 5. [IBM] /n./ Empty space on a disk that has
been clandestinely allocated against future need.
gaseous /adj./ Deserving of being gassed. Disseminated
by Geoff Goodfellow while at SRI; became particularly popular after
the Moscone-Milk killings in San Francisco, when it was learned
that the defendant Dan White (a politician who had supported
Proposition 7) would get the gas chamber under Proposition 7 if
convicted of first-degree murder (he was eventually convicted of
manslaughter).
gawble /gaw'bl/ /n./ See chawmp.
GC /G-C/ [from LISP terminology; `Garbage Collect']
1. /vt./ To clean up and throw away useless things. "I think I'll
GC the top of my desk today." When said of files, this is
equivalent to GFR. 2. /vt./ To recycle, reclaim, or put to
another use. 3. /n./ An instantiation of the garbage collector
process.
`Garbage collection' is computer-science techspeak for a
particular class of strategies for dynamically but transparently
reallocating computer memory (i.e., without requiring explicit
allocation and deallocation by higher-level software). One such
strategy involves periodically scanning all the data in memory and
determining what is no longer accessible; useless data items are
then discarded so that the memory they occupy can be recycled and
used for another purpose. Implementations of the LISP language
usually use garbage collection.
In jargon, the full phrase is sometimes heard but the abbrev
GC is more frequently used because it is shorter. Note that there
is an ambiguity in usage that has to be resolved by context: "I'm
going to garbage-collect my desk" usually means to clean out the
drawers, but it could also mean to throw away or recycle the desk
itself.
GCOS /jee'kohs/ /n./ A quick-and-dirty clone of
System/360 DOS that emerged from GE around 1970; originally called
GECOS (the General Electric Comprehensive Operating System). Later
kluged to support primitive timesharing and transaction processing.
After the buyout of GE's computer division by Honeywell, the name
was changed to General Comprehensive Operating System (GCOS).
Other OS groups at Honeywell began referring to it as `God's Chosen
Operating System', allegedly in reaction to the GCOS crowd's
uninformed and snotty attitude about the superiority of their
product. All this might be of zero interest, except for two facts:
(1) The GCOS people won the political war, and this led in the
orphaning and eventual death of Honeywell Multics, and (2)
GECOS/GCOS left one permanent mark on Unix. Some early Unix
systems at Bell Labs used GCOS machines for print spooling and
various other services; the field added to /etc/passwd to
carry GCOS ID information was called the `GECOS field' and
survives today as the pw_gecos member used for the user's
full name and other human-ID information. GCOS later played a
major role in keeping Honeywell a dismal also-ran in the mainframe
market, and was itself ditched for Unix in the late 1980s when
Honeywell retired its aging big iron designs.
GECOS /jee'kohs/ /n./ See GCOS.
gedanken /g*-dahn'kn/ /adj./ Ungrounded; impractical; not
well-thought-out; untried; untested.
`Gedanken' is a German word for `thought'. A thought
experiment is one you carry out in your head. In physics, the term
`gedanken experiment' is used to refer to an experiment that is
impractical to carry out, but useful to consider because it can
be reasoned about theoretically. (A classic gedanken experiment of
relativity theory involves thinking about a man in an elevator
accelerating through space.) Gedanken experiments are very useful
in physics, but must be used with care. It's too easy to idealize
away some important aspect of the real world in constructing the
`apparatus'.
Among hackers, accordingly, the word has a pejorative connotation.
It is typically used of a project, especially one in artificial
intelligence research, that is written up in grand detail
(typically as a Ph.D. thesis) without ever being implemented to
any great extent. Such a project is usually perpetrated by people
who aren't very good hackers or find programming distasteful or are
just in a hurry. A `gedanken thesis' is usually marked by an
obvious lack of intuition about what is programmable and what is
not, and about what does and does not constitute a clear
specification of an algorithm. See also AI-complete,
DWIM.
geef /v./ [ostensibly from `gefingerpoken']
/vt./ Syn. mung. See also blinkenlights.
geek code /n./ (also "Code of the Geeks"). A set of
codes commonly used in sig blocks to broadcast the interests,
skills, and aspirations of the poster. Features a G at the left
margin followed by numerous letter codes, often suffixed with
plusses or minuses. Because many net users are involved in
computer science, the most common prefix is `GCS'. To see a copy
of the current code, browse
http://krypton.mankato.msus.edu/~hayden/geek.html. Here is a
sample geek code (that or Robert Hayden, the code's inventor) from
that page:
-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.1
GED/J d-- s:++>: a- C++(++++)$ ULUO++ P+>+++ L++ !E---- W+(---) N+++
o+ K+++ w+(---) O- M+$>++ V-- PS++(+++)>$ PE++(+)>$ Y++ PGP++ t- 5+++
X++ R+++>$ tv+ b+ DI+++ D+++ G+++++>$ e++$>++++ h r-- y+**
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------
The geek code originated in 1993; it was inspired (according to the
inventor) by previous "bear", "smurf" and "twink"
style-and-sexual-preference codes from lesbian and gay
newsgroups. It has in turn spawned imitators; there is now
even a "Saturn geek code" for owners of the Saturn car. See also
computer geek.
geek out /vi./ To temporarily enter techno-nerd mode while in
a non-hackish context, for example at parties held near computer
equipment. Especially used when you need to do or say something
highly technical and don't have time to explain: "Pardon me while
I geek out for a moment." See computer geek; see also
propeller head.
gen /jen/ /n.,v./ Short for generate, used frequently
in both spoken and written contexts.
gender mender /n./ A cable connector shell with either two
male or two female connectors on it, used to correct the mismatches
that result when some loser didn't understand the RS232C
specification and the distinction between DTE and DCE. Used
esp. for RS-232C parts in either the original D-25 or the IBM
PC's bogus D-9 format. Also called `gender bender', `gender
blender', `sex changer', and even `homosexual adapter;'
however, there appears to be some confusion as to whether a `male
homosexual adapter' has pins on both sides (is doubly male) or
sockets on both sides (connects two males).
General Public Virus /n./ Pejorative name for some versions
of the GNU project copyleft or General Public License
(GPL), which requires that any tools or apps incorporating
copylefted code must be source-distributed on the same
counter-commercial terms as GNU stuff. Thus it is alleged that the
copyleft `infects' software generated with GNU tools, which may
in turn infect other software that reuses any of its code. The
Free Software Foundation's official position as of January 1991 is
that copyright law limits the scope of the GPL to "programs
textually incorporating significant amounts of GNU code", and that
the `infection' is not passed on to third parties unless actual
GNU source is transmitted (as in, for example, use of the Bison
parser skeleton). Nevertheless, widespread suspicion that the
copyleft language is `boobytrapped' has caused many
developers to avoid using GNU tools and the GPL. Recent (July
1991) changes in the language of the version 2.00 license may
eliminate this problem.
generate /vt./ To produce something according to an algorithm
or program or set of rules, or as a (possibly unintended) side
effect of the execution of an algorithm or program. The opposite
of parse. This term retains its mechanistic connotations
(though often humorously) when used of human behavior. "The guy
is rational most of the time, but mention nuclear energy around him
and he'll generate infinite flamage."
Genius From Mars Technique /n./ [TMRC] A visionary quality
which enables one to ignore the standard approach and come up with
a totally unexpected new algorithm. An attack on a problem from an
offbeat angle that no one has ever thought of before, but that in
retrospect makes total sense. Compare grok, zen.
gensym /jen'sim/ [from MacLISP for `generated symbol']
1. /v./ To invent a new name for something temporary, in such a way
that the name is almost certainly not in conflict with one already
in use. 2. /n./ The resulting name. The canonical form of a gensym
is `Gnnnn' where nnnn represents a number; any LISP hacker would
recognize G0093 (for example) as a gensym. 3. A freshly generated
data structure with a gensymmed name. Gensymmed names are useful
for storing or uniquely identifying crufties (see cruft).
Get a life! /imp./ Hacker-standard way of suggesting that the
person to whom it is directed has succumbed to terminal geekdom
(see computer geek). Often heard on Usenet, esp. as a
way of suggesting that the target is taking some obscure issue of
theology too seriously. This exhortation was popularized by
William Shatner on a "Saturday Night Live" episode in a
speech that ended "Get a life!", but some respondents
believe it to have been in use before then. It was certainly in
wide use among hackers for at least five years before achieving
mainstream currency in early 1992.
Get a real computer! /imp./ Typical hacker response to news
that somebody is having trouble getting work done on a system that
(a) is single-tasking, (b) has no hard disk, or (c) has an address
space smaller than 16 megabytes. This is as of early 1996; note
that the threshold for `real computer' rises with time. See
bitty box and toy.
GFR /G-F-R/ /vt./ [ITS: from `Grim File Reaper', an ITS and
LISP Machine utility] To remove a file or files according to some
program-automated or semi-automatic manual procedure, especially
one designed to reclaim mass storage space or reduce name-space
clutter (the original GFR actually moved files to tape). Often
generalized to pieces of data below file level. "I used to have
his phone number, but I guess I GFRed it." See also
prowler, reaper. Compare GC, which discards only
provably worthless stuff.
GIFs at 11 [Fidonet] Fidonet alternative to film at 11, especially in echoes (Fidonet topic areas) where uuencoded
GIFs are permitted. Other formats, especially JPEG and MPEG,
may be referenced instead.
gig /jig/ or /gig/ /n./ [SI] See quantifiers.
giga- /ji'ga/ or /gi'ga/ /pref./ [SI] See
quantifiers.
GIGO /gi:'goh/ [acronym] 1. `Garbage In, Garbage Out' ---
usually said in response to lusers who complain that a program
didn't "do the right thing" when given imperfect input or
otherwise mistreated in some way. Also commonly used to describe
failures in human decision making due to faulty, incomplete, or
imprecise data. 2. `Garbage In, Gospel Out': this more recent
expansion is a sardonic comment on the tendency human beings have
to put excessive trust in `computerized' data.
gilley /n./ [Usenet] The unit of analogical bogosity.
According to its originator, the standard for one gilley was "the
act of bogotoficiously comparing the shutting down of 1000 machines
for a day with the killing of one person". The milligilley has
been found to suffice for most normal conversational exchanges.
gillion /gil'y*n/ or /jil'y*n/ /n./ [formed from
giga- by analogy with mega/million and tera/trillion]
@Math{10^9}. Same as an American billion or a British `milliard'.
How one pronounces this depends on whether one speaks giga-
with a hard or soft `g'.
GIPS /gips/ or /jips/ /n./ [analogy with MIPS]
Giga-Instructions per Second (also possibly `Gillions of
Instructions per Second'; see gillion). In 1991, this is used
of only a handful of highly parallel machines, but this is expected
to change. Compare KIPS.
glark /glark/ /vt./ To figure something out from context.
"The System III manuals are pretty poor, but you can generally
glark the meaning from context." Interestingly, the word was
originally `glork'; the context was "This gubblick contains many
nonsklarkish English flutzpahs, but the overall pluggandisp can be
glorked [sic] from context" (David Moser, quoted by Douglas
Hofstadter in his "Metamagical Themas" column in the January
1981 "Scientific American"). It is conjectured that hackish
usage mutated the verb to `glark' because glork was already
an established jargon term. Compare grok, zen.
glass /n./ [IBM] Synonym for silicon.
glass tty /glas T-T-Y/ or /glas ti'tee/ /n./ A terminal
that has a display screen but which, because of hardware or
software limitations, behaves like a teletype or some other
printing terminal, thereby combining the disadvantages of both:
like a printing terminal, it can't do fancy display hacks, and like
a display terminal, it doesn't produce hard copy. An example is
the early `dumb' version of Lear-Siegler ADM 3 (without cursor
control). See tube, tty; compare dumb terminal,
smart terminal. See " TV Typewriters A Tale of Hackish Ingenuity" (Appendix
A) for an interesting true story about a glass tty.
glassfet /glas'fet/ /n./ [by analogy with MOSFET, the
acronym for `Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Field-Effect Transistor']
Syn. firebottle, a humorous way to refer to a vacuum tube.
glitch /glich/ [from German `glitschig' to slip, via
Yiddish `glitshen', to slide or skid] 1. /n./ A sudden interruption
in electric service, sanity, continuity, or program function.
Sometimes recoverable. An interruption in electric service is
specifically called a `power glitch' (also power hit), of
grave concern because it usually crashes all the computers. In
jargon, though, a hacker who got to the middle of a sentence and
then forgot how he or she intended to complete it might say,
"Sorry, I just glitched". 2. /vi./ To commit a glitch. See
gritch. 3. /vt./ [Stanford] To scroll a display screen, esp.
several lines at a time. WAITS terminals used to do this in
order to avoid continuous scrolling, which is distracting to the
eye. 4. obs. Same as magic cookie, sense 2.
All these uses of `glitch' derive from the specific technical
meaning the term has in the electronic hardware world, where it is
now techspeak. A glitch can occur when the inputs of a circuit
change, and the outputs change to some random value for some
very brief time before they settle down to the correct value. If
another circuit inspects the output at just the wrong time, reading
the random value, the results can be very wrong and very hard to
debug (a glitch is one of many causes of electronic heisenbugs).
glob /glob/, not /glohb/ /v.,n./ [Unix] To expand
special characters in a wildcarded name, or the act of so doing
(the action is also called `globbing'). The Unix conventions for
filename wildcarding have become sufficiently pervasive that many
hackers use some of them in written English, especially in email or
news on technical topics. Those commonly encountered include the
following:
- *
- wildcard for any string (see also UN*X)
- ?
- wildcard for any single character (generally read this way only at the
beginning or in the middle of a word)
- []
- delimits a wildcard matching any of the enclosed characters
- {}
- alternation of comma-separated alternatives; thus, `foo{baz,qux}'
would be read as `foobaz' or `fooqux'
Some examples: "He said his name was [KC]arl" (expresses
ambiguity). "I don't read talk.politics.*" (any of the
talk.politics subgroups on Usenet). Other examples are given
under the entry for X. Note that glob patterns are similar,
but not identical, to those used in regexps.
Historical note: The jargon usage derives from glob, the
name of a subprogram that expanded wildcards in archaic pre-Bourne
versions of the Unix shell.
glork /glork/ 1. /interj./ Term of mild surprise, usually
tinged with outrage, as when one attempts to save the results of
two hours of editing and finds that the system has just crashed.
2. Used as a name for just about anything. See foo.
3. /vt./ Similar to glitch, but usually used reflexively. "My
program just glorked itself." See also glark.
glue /n./ Generic term for any interface logic or protocol
that connects two component blocks. For example, Blue Glue is
IBM's SNA protocol, and hardware designers call anything used to
connect large VLSI's or circuit blocks `glue logic'.
gnarly /nar'lee/ /adj./ Both obscure and hairy
(sense 1). " Yow! -- the tuned assembler implementation of
BitBlt is really gnarly!" From a similar but less specific usage
in surfer slang.
GNU /gnoo/, not /noo/ 1. [acronym: `GNU's Not
Unix!', see recursive acronym] A Unix-workalike development
effort of the Free Software Foundation headed by Richard Stallman
<rms@gnu.ai.mit.edu>. GNU EMACS and the GNU C compiler, two
tools designed for this project, have become very popular in
hackerdom and elsewhere. The GNU project was designed partly to
proselytize for RMS's position that information is community
property and all software source should be shared. One of its
slogans is "Help stamp out software hoarding!" Though this
remains controversial (because it implicitly denies any right of
designers to own, assign, and sell the results of their labors),
many hackers who disagree with RMS have nevertheless cooperated to
produce large amounts of high-quality software for free
redistribution under the Free Software Foundation's imprimatur.
See EMACS, copyleft, General Public Virus,
Linux. 2. Noted Unix hacker John Gilmore <gnu@toad.com>,
founder of Usenet's anarchic alt.* hierarchy.
GNUMACS /gnoo'maks/ /n./ [contraction of `GNU EMACS']
Often-heard abbreviated name for the GNU project's flagship
tool, EMACS. Used esp. in contrast with GOSMACS.
go flatline /v./ [from cyberpunk SF, refers to flattening of
EEG traces upon brain-death] (also adjectival `flatlined'). 1. To
die, terminate, or fail, esp. irreversibly. In hacker
parlance, this is used of machines only, human death being
considered somewhat too serious a matter to employ jargon-jokes
about. 2. To go completely quiescent; said of machines undergoing
controlled shutdown. "You can suffer file damage if you shut down
Unix but power off before the system has gone flatline." 3. Of a
video tube, to fail by losing vertical scan, so all one sees is a
bright horizontal line bisecting the screen.
go root /vi./ [Unix] To temporarily enter root mode in
order to perform a privileged operation. This use is deprecated in
Australia, where /v./ `root' refers to animal sex.
go-faster stripes /n./ [UK] Syn. chrome. Mainstream in
some parts of UK.
gobble /vt./ 1. To consume, usu. used with `up'. "The
output spy gobbles characters out of a tty output buffer."
2. To obtain, usu. used with `down'. "I guess I'll gobble down
a copy of the documentation tomorrow." See also snarf.
Godwin's Law /prov./ [Usenet] "As a Usenet discussion grows
longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler
approaches one." There is a tradition in many groups that, once
this occurs, that thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis
has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress. Godwin's
Law thus practically guarantees the existence of an upper bound on
thread length in those groups.
Godzillagram /god-zil'*-gram/ /n./ [from Japan's national
hero] 1. A network packet that in theory is a broadcast to every
machine in the universe. The typical case is an IP datagram whose
destination IP address is [255.255.255.255]. Fortunately, few
gateways are foolish enough to attempt to implement this case!
2. A network packet of maximum size. An IP Godzillagram has 65,536
octets. Compare super source quench.
golden /adj./ [prob. from folklore's `golden egg'] When
used to describe a magnetic medium (e.g., `golden disk',
`golden tape'), describes one containing a tested, up-to-spec,
ready-to-ship software version. Compare platinum-iridium.
golf-ball printer /n. obs./ The IBM 2741, a slow but
letter-quality printing device and terminal based on the IBM
Selectric typewriter. The `golf ball' was a little spherical
frob bearing reversed embossed images of 88 different characters
arranged on four parallels of latitude; one could change the font
by swapping in a different golf ball. The print element spun and
jerked alarmingly in action and when in motion was sometimes
described as an `infuriated golf ball'. This was the technology
that enabled APL to use a non-EBCDIC, non-ASCII, and in fact
completely non-standard character set. This put it 10 years ahead
of its time -- where it stayed, firmly rooted, for the next 20,
until character displays gave way to programmable bit-mapped
devices with the flexibility to support other character sets.
gonk /gonk/ /vi.,n./ 1. To prevaricate or to embellish the
truth beyond any reasonable recognition. In German the term is
(mythically) `gonken'; in Spanish the verb becomes `gonkar'.
"You're gonking me. That story you just told me is a bunch of
gonk." In German, for example, "Du gonkst mir" (You're pulling
my leg). See also gonkulator. 2. [British] To grab some
sleep at an odd time; compare gronk out.
gonkulator /gon'kyoo-lay-tr/ /n./ [from the old
"Hogan's Heroes" TV series] A pretentious piece of equipment
that actually serves no useful purpose. Usually used to describe
one's least favorite piece of computer hardware. See gonk.
gonzo /gon'zoh/ /adj./ [from Hunter S. Thompson]
Overwhelming; outrageous; over the top; very large, esp. used of
collections of source code, source files, or individual functions.
Has some of the connotations of moby and hairy, but
without the implication of obscurity or complexity.
Good Thing /n.,adj./ Often capitalized; always pronounced as
if capitalized. 1. Self-evidently wonderful to anyone in a
position to notice: "The Trailblazer's 19.2Kbaud PEP mode with
on-the-fly Lempel-Ziv compression is a Good Thing for sites
relaying netnews." 2. Something that can't possibly have any ill
side-effects and may save considerable grief later: "Removing the
self-modifying code from that shared library would be a Good
Thing." 3. When said of software tools or libraries, as in "YACC
is a Good Thing", specifically connotes that the thing has
drastically reduced a programmer's work load. Oppose Bad Thing.
gopher /n./ A type of Internet service first floated around
1991 and now (1994) being obsolesced by the World Wide Web. Gopher
presents a menuing interface to a tree or graph of links;
the links can be to documents, runnable programs, or other gopher
menus arbitrarily far across the net.
Some claim that the gopher software, which was originally developed
at the University of Minnesota, was named after the Minnesota
Gophers (a sports team). Others claim the word derives from
American slang `gofer' (from "go for", dialectical "go fer"),
one whose job is to run and fetch things. Finally, observe that
gophers (aka woodchucks) dig long tunnels, and the idea of
tunneling through the net to find information was a defining
metaphor for the developers. Probably all three things were true,
but with the first two coming first and the gopher-tunnel metaphor
serendipitously adding flavor and impetus to the project as it
developed out of its concept stage.
gopher hole /n./ 1. Any access to a gopher. 2. [Amateur
Packet Radio] The terrestrial analog of a wormhole (sense
2), from which this term was coined. A gopher hole links two
amateur packet relays through some non-ham radio medium.
gorets /gor'ets/ /n./ The unknown ur-noun, fill in your own
meaning. Found esp. on the Usenet newsgroup alt.gorets, which
seems to be a running contest to redefine the word by implication
in the funniest and most peculiar way, with the understanding that
no definition is ever final. [A correspondent from the Former
Soviet Union informs me that `gorets' is Russian for `mountain
dweller' --ESR] Compare frink.
gorilla arm /n./ The side-effect that destroyed touch-screens
as a mainstream input technology despite a promising start in the
early 1980s. It seems the designers of all those spiffy
touch-menu systems failed to notice that humans aren't designed to
hold their arms in front of their faces making small motions.
After more than a very few selections, the arm begins to feel sore,
cramped, and oversized -- the operator looks like a gorilla while
using the touch screen and feels like one afterwards. This is now
considered a classic cautionary tale to human-factors designers;
"Remember the gorilla arm!" is shorthand for "How is this going
to fly in real use?".
gorp /gorp/ /n./ [CMU: perhaps from the canonical hiker's
food, Good Old Raisins and Peanuts] Another metasyntactic variable, like foo and bar.
GOSMACS /goz'maks/ /n./ [contraction of `Gosling EMACS']
The first EMACS-in-C implementation, predating but now largely
eclipsed by GNUMACS. Originally freeware; a commercial
version is now modestly popular as `UniPress EMACS'. The author,
James Gosling, went on to invent NeWS and the programming
language Java; the latter earned him demigod status.
Gosperism /gos'p*r-izm/ /n./ A hack, invention, or saying
due to arch-hacker R. William (Bill) Gosper. This notion merits
its own term because there are so many of them. Many of the
entries in HAKMEM are Gosperisms; see also life.
gotcha /n./ A misfeature of a system, especially a
programming language or environment, that tends to breed bugs or
mistakes because it both enticingly easy to invoke and completely
unexpected and/or unreasonable in its outcome. For example, a
classic gotcha in C is the fact that if (a=b) {code;}
is syntactically valid and sometimes even correct. It puts the
value of b into a and then executes code if
a is non-zero. What the programmer probably meant was
if (a==b) {code;}, which executes code if a
and b are equal.
GPL /G-P-L/ /n./ Abbreviation for `General Public
License' in widespread use; see copyleft, General Public Virus.
GPV /G-P-V/ /n./ Abbrev. for General Public Virus in
widespread use.
grault /grawlt/ /n./ Yet another metasyntactic variable, invented by Mike Gallaher and propagated by the
GOSMACS documentation. See corge.
gray goo /n./ A hypothetical substance composed of
sagans of sub-micron-sized self-replicating robots programmed
to make copies of themselves out of whatever is available. The
image that goes with the term is one of the entire biosphere of
Earth being eventually converted to robot goo. This is the
simplest of the nanotechnology disaster scenarios, easily
refuted by arguments from energy requirements and elemental
abundances. Compare blue goo.
Great Renaming /n./ The flag day in 1985 on which all of
the non-local groups on the Usenet had their names changed
from the net.- format to the current multiple-hierarchies scheme.
Used esp. in discussing the history of newsgroup names. "The
oldest sources group is comp.sources.misc; before the Great
Renaming, it was net.sources."
Great Runes /n./ Uppercase-only text or display messages.
Some archaic operating systems still emit these. See also
runes, smash case, fold case.
Decades ago, back in the days when it was the sole supplier of
long-distance hardcopy transmittal devices, the Teletype
Corporation was faced with a major design choice. To shorten code
lengths and cut complexity in the printing mechanism, it had been
decided that teletypes would use a monocase font, either ALL UPPER
or all lower. The Question Of The Day was therefore, which one to
choose. A study was conducted on readability under various
conditions of bad ribbon, worn print hammers, etc. Lowercase won;
it is less dense and has more distinctive letterforms, and is thus
much easier to read both under ideal conditions and when the
letters are mangled or partly obscured. The results were filtered
up through management. The chairman of Teletype killed the
proposal because it failed one incredibly important criterion:
"It would be impossible to spell the name of the Deity
correctly."
In this way (or so, at least, hacker folklore has it) superstition
triumphed over utility. Teletypes were the major input devices on
most early computers, and terminal manufacturers looking for
corners to cut naturally followed suit until well into the 1970s.
Thus, that one bad call stuck us with Great Runes for thirty years.
Great Worm, the /n./ The 1988 Internet worm perpetrated
by RTM. This is a play on Tolkien (compare elvish,
elder days). In the fantasy history of his Middle Earth
books, there were dragons powerful enough to lay waste to entire
regions; two of these (Scatha and Glaurung) were known as "the
Great Worms". This usage expresses the connotation that the RTM
hack was a sort of devastating watershed event in hackish history;
certainly it did more to make non-hackers nervous about the
Internet than anything before or since.
great-wall /vi.,n./ [from SF fandom] A mass expedition to an
oriental restaurant, esp. one where food is served family-style
and shared. There is a common heuristic about the amount of food
to order, expressed as "Get @Math{N - 1} entrees"; the value of
@Math{N}, which is the number of people in the group, can be
inferred from context (see N). See oriental food,
ravs, stir-fried random.
Green Book /n./ 1. One of the three standard PostScript
references: "PostScript Language Program Design", bylined
`Adobe Systems' (Addison-Wesley, 1988; QA76.73.P67P66 ISBN
0-201-14396-8); see also Red Book, Blue Book, and the
White Book (sense 2). 2. Informal name for one of the three
standard references on SmallTalk: "Smalltalk-80: Bits of
History, Words of Advice", by Glenn Krasner (Addison-Wesley, 1983;
QA76.8.S635S58; ISBN 0-201-11669-3) (this, too, is associated with
blue and red books). 3. The "X/Open Compatibility Guide",
which defines an international standard Unix environment that
is a proper superset of POSIX/SVID; also includes descriptions of a
standard utility toolkit, systems administrations features, and the
like. This grimoire is taken with particular seriousness in
Europe. See Purple Book. 4. The IEEE 1003.1 POSIX Operating
Systems Interface standard has been dubbed "The Ugly Green Book".
5. Any of the 1992 standards issued by the CCITT's tenth plenary
assembly. These include, among other things, the X.400 email
standard and the Group 1 through 4 fax standards. See also
book titles.
green bytes /n./ (also `green words') 1. Meta-information
embedded in a file, such as the length of the file or its name; as
opposed to keeping such information in a separate description file
or record. The term comes from an IBM user's group meeting
(ca. 1962) at which these two approaches were being debated and the
diagram of the file on the blackboard had the `green bytes' drawn
in green. 2. By extension, the non-data bits in any
self-describing format. "A GIF file contains, among other things,
green bytes describing the packing method for the image." Compare
out-of-band, zigamorph, fence (sense 1).
green card /n./ [after the "IBM System/360 Reference
Data" card] A summary of an assembly language, even if the color is
not green. Less frequently used now because of the decrease in the
use of assembly language. "I'll go get my green card so I can
check the addressing mode for that instruction." Some green cards
are actually booklets.
The original green card became a yellow card when the System/370
was introduced, and later a yellow booklet. An anecdote from IBM
refers to a scene that took place in a programmers' terminal room
at Yorktown in 1978. A luser overheard one of the programmers
ask another "Do you have a green card?" The other grunted and
passed the first a thick yellow booklet. At this point the luser
turned a delicate shade of olive and rapidly left the room, never
to return.
green lightning /n./ [IBM] 1. Apparently random flashing
streaks on the face of 3278-9 terminals while a new symbol set is
being downloaded. This hardware bug was left deliberately unfixed,
as some genius within IBM suggested it would let the user know that
`something is happening'. That, it certainly does. Later
microprocessor-driven IBM color graphics displays were actually
programmed to produce green lightning! 2. [proposed] Any
bug perverted into an alleged feature by adroit rationalization or
marketing. "Motorola calls the CISC cruft in the 88000
architecture `compatibility logic', but I call it green
lightning". See also feature (sense 6).
green machine /n./ A computer or peripheral device that has
been designed and built to military specifications for field
equipment (that is, to withstand mechanical shock, extremes of
temperature and humidity, and so forth). Comes from the olive-drab
`uniform' paint used for military equipment.
Green's Theorem /prov./ [TMRC] For any story, in any group of
people there will be at least one person who has not heard the
story. A refinement of the theorem states that there will be
exactly one person (if there were more than one, it wouldn't
be as bad to re-tell the story). [The name of this theorem is a
play on a fundamental theorem in calculus. --ESR]
grep /grep/ /vi./ [from the qed/ed editor idiom g/re/p,
where re stands for a regular expression, to Globally search
for the Regular Expression and Print the lines containing matches
to it, via Unix grep(1)] To rapidly scan a file or set
of files looking for a particular string or pattern (when browsing
through a large set of files, one may speak of `grepping
around'). By extension, to look for something by pattern. "Grep
the bulletin board for the system backup schedule, would you?"
See also vgrep.
grilf // /n./ Girlfriend. Like newsfroup and
filk, a typo reincarnated as a new word. Seems to have
originated sometime in 1992 on Usenet. [A friend tells me
there was a Lloyd Biggle SF novel "Watchers Of The Dark", in
which alien species after species goes insane and begins to chant
"Grilf! Grilf!". A human detective eventually determines that
the word means "Liar!" I hope this has nothing to do with the
popularity of the Usenet term. --ESR]
grind /vt./ 1. [MIT and Berkeley] To prettify hardcopy of
code, especially LISP code, by reindenting lines, printing keywords
and comments in distinct fonts (if available), etc. This usage was
associated with the MacLISP community and is now rare;
prettyprint was and is the generic term for such
operations. 2. [Unix] To generate the formatted version of a
document from the nroff, troff, TeX, or Scribe
source. 3. To run seemingly interminably, esp. (but not
necessarily) if performing some tedious and inherently useless
task. Similar to crunch or grovel. Grinding has a
connotation of using a lot of CPU time, but it is possible to grind
a disk, network, etc. See also hog. 4. To make the whole
system slow. "Troff really grinds a PDP-11." 5. `grind grind'
/excl./ Roughly, "Isn't the machine slow today!"
grind crank /n./ A mythical accessory to a terminal. A
crank on the side of a monitor, which when operated makes a zizzing
noise and causes the computer to run faster. Usually one does not
refer to a grind crank out loud, but merely makes the appropriate
gesture and noise. See grind and wugga wugga.
Historical note: At least one real machine actually had a grind
crank -- the R1, a research machine built toward the end of the
days of the great vacuum tube computers, in 1959. R1 (also known
as `The Rice Institute Computer' (TRIC) and later as `The Rice
University Computer' (TRUC)) had a single-step/free-run switch for
use when debugging programs. Since single-stepping through a large
program was rather tedious, there was also a crank with a cam and
gear arrangement that repeatedly pushed the single-step button.
This allowed one to `crank' through a lot of code, then slow
down to single-step for a bit when you got near the code of
interest, poke at some registers using the console typewriter, and
then keep on cranking.
gripenet /n./ [IBM] A wry (and thoroughly unofficial) name
for IBM's internal VNET system, deriving from its common use by
IBMers to voice pointed criticism of IBM management that would be
taboo in more formal channels.
gritch /grich/ [MIT] 1. /n./ A complaint (often caused by a
glitch). 2. /vi./ To complain. Often verb-doubled: "Gritch
gritch". 3. A synonym for glitch (as verb or noun).
Interestingly, this word seems to have a separate history from
glitch, with which it is often confused. Back in the early
1960s, when `glitch' was strictly a hardware-tech's term of art,
the Burton House dorm at M.I.T. maintained a "Gritch Book", a
blank volume, into which the residents hand-wrote complaints,
suggestions, and witticisms. Previous years' volumes of this
tradition were maintained, dating back to antiquity. The word
"gritch" was described as a portmanteau of "gripe" and
"bitch". Thus, sense 3 above is at least historically incorrect.
grok /grok/, var. /grohk/ /vt./ [from the novel
"Stranger in a Strange Land", by Robert A. Heinlein, where it
is a Martian word meaning literally `to drink' and metaphorically
`to be one with'] The emphatic form is `grok in
fullness'. 1. To understand, usually in a global sense. Connotes
intimate and exhaustive knowledge. Contrast zen, which is
similar supernal understanding experienced as a single brief flash.
See also glark. 2. Used of programs, may connote merely
sufficient understanding. "Almost all C compilers grok the
void type these days."
gronk /gronk/ /vt./ [popularized by Johnny Hart's comic
strip "B.C." but the word apparently predates that] 1. To
clear the state of a wedged device and restart it. More severe
than `to frob' (sense 2). 2. [TMRC] To cut, sever, smash,
or similarly disable. 3. The sound made by many 3.5-inch diskette
drives. In particular, the microfloppies on a Commodore Amiga go
"grink, gronk".
gronk out /vi./ To cease functioning. Of people, to go home
and go to sleep. "I guess I'll gronk out now; see you all
tomorrow."
gronked /adj./ 1. Broken. "The teletype scanner was
gronked, so we took the system down." 2. Of people, the condition
of feeling very tired or (less commonly) sick. "I've been chasing
that bug for 17 hours now and I am thoroughly gronked!" Compare
broken, which means about the same as gronk used of
hardware, but connotes depression or mental/emotional problems in
people.
grovel /vi./ 1. To work interminably and without apparent
progress. Often used transitively with `over' or `through'.
"The file scavenger has been groveling through the /usr
directories for 10 minutes now." Compare grind and
crunch. Emphatic form: `grovel obscenely'. 2. To examine
minutely or in complete detail. "The compiler grovels over the
entire source program before beginning to translate it." "I
grovelled through all the documentation, but I still couldn't find
the command I wanted."
grunge /gruhnj/ /n./ 1. That which is grungy, or that which
makes it so. 2. [Cambridge] Code which is inaccessible due to
changes in other parts of the program. The preferred term in North
America is dead code.
gubbish /guhb'*sh/ /n./ [a portmanteau of `garbage' and
`rubbish'; may have originated with SF author Philip K. Dick]
Garbage; crap; nonsense. "What is all this gubbish?" The
opposite portmanteau `rubbage' is also reported; in fact, it was
British slang during the 19th century and appears in Dickens.
guiltware /gilt'weir/ /n./ 1. A piece of freeware
decorated with a message telling one how long and hard the author
worked on it and intimating that one is a no-good freeloader if one
does not immediately send the poor suffering martyr gobs of money.
2. A piece of shareware that works.
gumby /guhm'bee/ /n./ [from a class of Monty Python
characters, poss. with some influence from the 1960s claymation
character] An act of minor but conspicuous stupidity, often in
`gumby maneuver' or `pull a gumby'. 2. [NRL] /n./ A bureaucrat,
or other technical incompetent who impedes the progress of real
work. 3. /adj./ Relating to things typically associated with people
in sense 2. (e.g. "Ran would be writing code, but Richard gave
him gumby work that's due on Friday", or, "Dammit! Travel
screwed up my plane tickets. I have to go out on gumby patrol.")
gun /vt./ [ITS: from the :GUN command] To forcibly
terminate a program or job (computer, not career). "Some idiot
left a background process running soaking up half the cycles, so I
gunned it." Usage: now rare. Compare can, blammo.
gunch /guhnch/ /vt./ [TMRC] To push, prod, or poke at a
device that has almost (but not quite) produced the desired result.
Implies a threat to mung.
gurfle /ger'fl/ /interj./ An expression of shocked
disbelief. "He said we have to recode this thing in FORTRAN by
next week. Gurfle!" Compare weeble.
guru /n./ [Unix] An expert. Implies not only wizard
skill but also a history of being a knowledge resource for others.
Less often, used (with a qualifier) for other experts on other
systems, as in `VMS guru'. See source of all good bits.
guru meditation /n./ Amiga equivalent of `panic' in Unix
(sometimes just called a `guru' or `guru event'). When the
system crashes, a cryptic message of the form "GURU MEDITATION
#XXXXXXXX.YYYYYYYY" may appear, indicating what the problem was.
An Amiga guru can figure things out from the numbers. Sometimes a
guru event must be followed by a Vulcan nerve pinch.
This term is (no surprise) an in-joke from the earliest days of the
Amiga. There used to be a device called a `Joyboard' which was
basically a plastic board built onto a joystick-like device; it was
sold with a skiing game cartridge for the Atari game machine. It
is said that whenever the prototype OS crashed, the system
programmer responsible would calm down by concentrating on a
solution while sitting cross-legged on a Joyboard trying to keep
the board in balance. This position resembled that of a meditating
guru. Sadly, the joke was removed in AmigaOS 2.04 (actually in
2.00, a buggy post-2.0 release on the A3000 only).
gweep /gweep/ [WPI] 1. /v./ To hack, usually at night.
At WPI, from 1975 onwards, one who gweeped could often be found at
the College Computing Center punching cards or crashing the
PDP-10 or, later, the DEC-20. A correspondent who was there at
the time opines that the term was originally onomatopoetic,
describing the keyclick sound of the Datapoint terminals long
connected to the PDP-10. The term has survived the demise of those
technologies, however, and was still alive in late 1991. "I'm
going to go gweep for a while. See you in the morning." "I gweep
from 8 PM till 3 AM during the week." 2. /n./ One who habitually
gweeps in sense 1; a hacker. "He's a hard-core gweep,
mumbles code in his sleep."
back to New Hacker's Dictionary Go to the previous, next section.
|
